2010 State of the Union: The New Game

President Obama’s 2010 State of the Union Address was last week, and now that I’ve had a few days to mull it over I figured I’d write about it.  No, I’m not going to talk about the specific policies he mentioned – the SOTU’s big, looking at the tactics is a waste of time.  Something like this calls for a strategic analysis.

Video here; Transcript here.

I’ve never watched a State of the Union Address before; I’ve read summaries of them, but never actually watched one.  And the first things that stood out to me about this one was the applause – the ceaseless, unwarranted, unending applause!

There were approximately one-hundred paragraphs in the address, and each one of them was followed by five to ten seconds of applause (some of it standing ovation) by the gathered political and financial elites.

You’ve got to ask yourself: what must it feel like to be the one who’s speaking?

Now I’m not saying that the Republicans should have turned their chairs around and ignored him; I’m not even saying that this should have been a vicious question-and-answer period like you’d find in the British House of Commons.  I’m willing to accept (for sake of argument) that there are better times for something like that, and that having the leader of the world’s most powerful nation address the country without interruption is a sensible practice.

But if that’s the case, an intellectual and dignified silence – only occasionally broken by applause – ought to be the norm.  The SOTU had more cheering than a carnival circus, and that’s what it turned into.  The first five, and last fifteen minutes were nothing but applause lights, and so was much of the middle.

If you want a stirring speech, go watch Independence Day.  The President ought to have more important things to do than girding the citizenry’s loins.

But the medium wasn’t the only thing that concerned me during the whole affair.  Keep in mind, everything that Obama’s doing right now – everything any President does during their first term – is balanced against, if not outright intended for winning their next term (it’s during the second term that they push their pet projects through).  And while it’s pretty much guaranteed that we’re going to have Hope for the next seven years, it’s the way the Dems go about achieving it – the structure of the whole thing – that interests me.

Some relevant quotes:

I am grateful to the House for passing [a climate bill] last year… I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy, and I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. [audience laughter] But even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future — because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.

For one thing I find it troubling that the President is willing to jeer against Climate Change Deniers (as if they’re pot-legalizers at a town hall meeting – pshaw!) when I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t do the same against Creationists.  Without going too deep into it (since I don’t feel like inciting a Climate Change debate), to pretend that the two theories are on the same level of factuality is ridiculous and anti-intellectual.  This is about spin, not truth.

But he further exacerbates this by conflating Climate Change Denial with anti-Greenwash opinions.  Even if the Anthropic Global Warming hypothesis is correct, it does not necessarily follow that Carbon Credits or state-funded Green technology is the solution.  But instead of arguing why these ideas makes sense, he appeals to American Nationalism.

That’s what I came to Washington to do. That’s why… we’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions.

But we can’t stop there. It’s time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress. And it’s time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office. Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. Well, I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.

This quote contains a statement that is blatantly dishonest, and another which is deeply misleading.

His claim about excluding lobbyists from Washington, while I wouldn’t say it was an outright lie, ignores the extreme contention over whether or not he fulfilled this promise.  Closing the revolving door where yesterday’s lobbyist become today’s politician, and vice versa, is an idea most of us can get behind and it was one of the key supports for his campaign platform.  And despite the fact that he did codify something into law, this promise is largely viewed as having been broken.

None of this is acknowledged, however; he simply states that his promise was kept.  After all, who’s going to say otherwise?  Iraq was invaded because of WMDs, and it took years before we started questioning things.  This time there’s no war.

Reality’s been manufactured, and Democratic politicians no longer have any bias.

His second statement completely misrepresents the case of Citizens United vs. FEC.  In short, the decision was against censorship of corporations who wish to broadcast political ads, or fund private groups with their own political leanings during a campaign; it did nothing to remove the restrictions on corporations making political donations.  It was a first amendment issue, and the arguments against it largely boil down to “People are smart enough to vote, but dumb enough to be tricked by corporations – ergo censorship.” Obama, like many of the critics, characterized it as corporations ‘buying elections’ – when it was anything but.  And yet there’s no way to sound-clip why exactly his statement is deceptive.

The language creates the reality, it creates the battlefield.  And what is it that Sun Tzu said about choosing the battlefield..?

I am absolutely convinced that was the right thing to do. But families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same. So tonight, I’m proposing specific steps to pay for the $1 trillion that it took to rescue the economy last year.

Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t. And if I have to enforce this discipline by veto, I will.

And here we have the end game.  Whether this spending cap will make a serious dent in the deficit, or whether it will simply cap one eighth of the budget for a trivial savings, is irrelevant.  During the next year the Administration will continue to provide ‘stimulus’ packages, and claim that the economy is in recovery; in 2011 when the recession’s still in full swing they can blame it on the ‘need to tighten our belts.’ When late 2012 finally rolls around they’ll pretend it’s a new financial crisis with a separate cause, he’ll paraphrase Bush’s claim that we need to “Stay the course,” and any private-sector announcements about official Depression status or 30% inflation will come late enough that he’ll manage to slip through.

So there you have it, folks; after eight years of living through The War on Terror we’ve entered the new era of Hope, Change, and Main Street not Wall Street.

Better disconnect your Kindle before they take away your copy of Atlas Shrugged.

A topical discussion is occurring here on the Thrill Seekers forum.